He hasn't entered any of the other North American events so if he wants to play any of them he'd have to take a wild card.

Given that he cannot gain any points from them (other than Washington, which is a 500 event), I'm not expecting to see him play before Canada, and then if he does have a bad time in the 1000 events and loses early in them, he's still got the option of getting a wild card to New Haven.

I could see him taking a wild card to Washington though as he has to play 4 500 events in the year (or end up with a zero) and at the moment he's only played 2, so if he doesn't play Washington, he'll have to play one of Bejing/Tokyo and Valencia/Basel in order to not end up with a penalty.

Yes, I agee that if he plays any extra event it's likely to be Washington. I think players who know they'll get a WC if they ask for one are more wary of entering non-mandatory events in advance these days because of the penalties for withdrawing (even if it's a relatively early withdrawal), which of course makes those penalties counter-productive because all they end up doing is taking WCs away from local players.

Alan Mackin on Andy Murray: http://www.theherald.co.uk/search/display.var.2519326.0.murrays_miles_better_but_still_has_way_to_go.php - not sure I agree with all the numbers (7/10 for 2nd serve when 1st serve only gets 8/10?) but what he actually says makes a lot of sense.

wolf wrote:

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ForeverDelayed wrote:

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I could see him taking a wild card to Washington though as he has to play 4 500 events in the year (or end up with a zero) and at the moment he's only played 2, so if he doesn't play Washington, he'll have to play one of Bejing/Tokyo and Valencia/Basel in order to not end up with a penalty.

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Doesn't Monte Carlo count towards his quota of 500 tournaments?

According to the Valencia website he has already comitted to play there.

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That's true. MC does count as a 500 - nice of the ATP to make things more confusing by including it among the mandatory Masters events on the rankings breakdown when it counts towards the 500 quote instead ...

He has to play at least one 500 after the USO (e.g. Valencia), though I'm not sure whether he has to count it - possibly if he plays four before the USO, he can count all of them instead as long as he actually turns up for one of the 500s afterwards.

Another possibility is that he could play a 250 duing the US hard court swing just to get some practice before the first of the Masters events and to give him another possible score to count when Doha falls off early next year - depends how confident he is of winning Doha again!

Well, it seems the answer is playing for North of Scotland in the Summer Country Cup. (And they still lost to Hertfordshire!)

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/tennis/article6723286.ece

Jamie with his partner lost the deciding rubber.

Drew wrote:

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Also passed driving test 1st time after 2 week course.

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Haha, that came to my mind whenever I saw the thread title. But resisted the temptation to post "Learning to drive" as a reply.